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Oversleeping and Insomnia
I have posted a few messages here now, and all of your responses are very valuable to me. Thank you. Here's another one...does anyone have problems with oversleeping and then insomnia? Every month for the last three years has been different for me regarding sleep patterns. I have had a month where I come home from work at 6:00 pm and sleep straight through until 6:30 am the next morning, and I will do that for weeks on end. On the weekends when I don't have to get up and go to work, I will come home and fall asleep around 8:00 pm on Friday night and sleep through until 2:00 pm on Saturday afternoon. All the while, there could be a war going on outside and I'd sleep right through it. The flip side is sometimes I'll sleep for three hours per night for two or three weeks at a time, but feel much more alert during the day. Is this typical of OSA? When I'm in a cycle where I sleep a lot I can easily sleep for 12 hours or more. Does anyone else do this? I'm really interested in the oversleeping and if it's typical of OSA.
Follow-up
Interesting scenario Julia, and not uncommon according to my sleep doc. I've lived much the same way as you since my early 20's (37 now). I was diagnosed with moderate/severe OSA last year and have been on CPAP for about 8 months. I still have occaional periods of insomnia (it's 4 a.m as i type!), but since CPAP these episodes are MUCH reduced..maybe a run of 3-4 wakeful nights in a month, rather than 2-3 weeks out of every month with a huge crash at the end. After having such distorted and irregular sleep for so long it takes some of us a while to adjust to getting good,restful,PROPER sleep. Apart from the occasional hiccup (like right now) I'm much improved. I suggest you should consult a specialist sleep doc and get yourself a full polysomnography (ie a FULL sleep study), if nothing else then to rule apnea out. At the risk of sounding like your grandma, good "sleep hygeine" helps me, especially when the insomnia strikes...what works for me is moderate early morning exercise..say a 40-60 minute brisk walk or swim before breakfast (aerobic exercise in the evening fires me up for hours), I avoid caffeine later than about 3 in the afternoon (and I LURVE coffee!), don't eat late, and avoid alcohol. A little Yoga and meditaion helps too. Some of the sleep sites have helpful advice in this area - search on "sleep hygeine". Good Luck,
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